


The Cabin

by MoreRealUnicorn



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Fluff, Hiking AU, Hurt/Comfort, alternating povs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-08 17:29:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13463055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoreRealUnicorn/pseuds/MoreRealUnicorn
Summary: Lexa lives alone in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, and is shocked to find herself rescuing a mysterious, beautiful, hiker.





	1. The Hiker

In a dense forest, a wind arose. It swept between spruce trees, by ferns covered in morning dew, past elk getting an early start on their foraging. Over mounds and hills, across streams and rivers, through ditches and canyons. Occasionally, the wind found a person, and delighted in causing them to tuck their head in at the sudden burst of cold air. But such joys were few and far between. It came to a wall near the top of a mountain, the first it had seen in many miles, and spent itself against it, struggling uselessly to bring it down.  
The wall had seen many winds since it had been raised years ago, and it was confident in its impregnability. None of them had ever budged it so much as a hair, and none of them ever would. The wall knew it would stand forever as a monument to itself, a life-sized map. All the wind could do to it was stir the chimes and mark yet another defeat. It would come back to try again, and again it would do nothing but make a brief melody. Such was the way of things.  
The wall was not alone in its way of thinking. It had two friends, and with itself, they all supported each other and knew the wind could never win. The fourth wall, however, was less optimistic. Sometimes the wind would come and it would have been left open. Not often, and never for long, but enough that the wall remembered the times when it had failed not only itself but the entire cabin.  
The cabin could not be called cozy. It was small, yes, and even comfortable at times, but it had entirely too many sharp corners and straight edges for that particular description. There was only one room, but it did have one corner partitioned off. There was a thin bed in another, a kitchenette in a third, and a small table and chair in the last. The roof was an A-frame, with the rafters exposed on the inside. They’d been commandeered for use as makeshift shelves, and were just low enough to be convenient as such. The furniture was all handmade, carefully measured, cut, and sanded to perfection. The windows over the bed and table let in natural light, and a tall candle on the table was the source of the twinkling orange glow that occasionally could be seen from them in the dark hours. The candle’s cylindrical body was still almost pristine, with only a few drippings leaving bumpy trails down the sides.  
The bed was covered by a layer of furs, painstakingly sewed together with miniscule stitches but no concern for matching color or style. There were others hanging from a rafter above, for the colder nights. A thicker bundle served as a rudimentary mattress, with a similar, smaller, lump on one end for a pillow.  
In the opposite corner stood a one-burner stove, an icebox, and a cabinet, filled with both food and cooking utensils.  
The partitions didn’t quite reach the rafters, and were much more thin sheets of wood than the rest of the cabin. Their contents were also somewhat of an anachronism: a modern toilet and sink.  
The floorboards didn’t creak when she trod across them, except, of course, for the fifth from the door. It always did on the way out, but never when she came from the other direction. She briefly considered taking a look one of these days, but the squeak had grown on her over time as one of the constants of her day.  
This one was looking to be as usual as it got. She was planning on her usual loop around the mountain, returning before darkness fell. It was only an hour prior to that, well after she had turned around, when she heard the scream from further downhill. That was definitely not usual. She knew of animals who sounded disturbingly like humans- red foxes or mountain goats, to name a few- but surely none of them could match the intensity the sound had described, even though she couldn’t think of any reason for another person to be out so far. It had cut off abruptly, too. Her mind made up, she turned toward it and began picking her way with haste, though still carefully. It wouldn’t do to injure herself on a mission to potentially rescue someone else. Eventually she came to one of her favorite spots to break for lunch and enjoy the view- a cliff overlooking a panoramic vista of the tundra. It was even more beautiful now, with the setting sun peering from the horizon. She liked to sit right on the edge and let her legs dangle, feeling _l’appel du vide_ , as the French called it. The call of the void, literally. The knowledge that all one had to do was tip forward or lean too far, and everything would change. In this case, quite briefly, as it was several hundred feet down. Even with the larger perspective, she still couldn’t see anything that could have produced such a sound. It had probably only been an angry fox.  
Resigning herself to giving up on the impromptu rescue mission, she decided to sit in the last few minutes of sun before heading back to the peak. She closed her eyes and felt the rays wash over her. But as she at length agilely clambered to her feet, she glanced down the cliffside, and beheld a distant figure on the ground. It was too far to make out any details, but they definitely weren’t moving. The mission was back on. Resisting the urge to sprint downhill- whoever they were, the next five minutes would not be life or death- nonetheless she did hurry as she pushed through a clump of undergrowth to reveal a rocky, zigzagging, path frequented only by goats and mysterious hermits on a deadline.  
Finally, she reached flat ground and did now run to the form. A shock of blonde hair, flannel, and beat-up boots made a brief impression on her focus, but all she could look at was the hiker’s right leg, which was bent at an angle at which legs were not meant to bend. It was certainly broken, and there was no way she could deal with it here. She had a satellite phone for emergencies back in the cabin, and briefly considered running back for it before dismissing the idea as ridiculous. Darkness in the tundra was not a healthy place for an unconscious human, especially this far from civilization. There was nothing else for it. She’d have to carry her up.  
The trip seemed like a blur: putting on the blonde’s backpack, picking up her herself, carefully avoiding moving the leg any more than completely necessary, beating her record for the goat path (a hundred and fifty-three breaths), and finally kicking open the door and laying the hiker on her bed. The adrenaline wearing off at last, she allowed herself a moment to stare at her new cabinmate. She was really quite attractive, but of course it would never work out. Shaking her head a little to clear out the last remaining bits of fuzz, she searched the cabinet for the sat phone, finding it at last inside a still almost full container of oatmeal. No wonder. She hated oatmeal. She brushed a few flakes off, and extended the antenna, but when she punched in the number for emergency services, all that came out was static. She tried again. Again. A random number. Anything. The phone stubbornly refused to give any indication it was even turned on.  
Her voice rusty with disuse, she spoke for the first time in days.  
“Well, shit.”


	2. The Yeti

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke wakes up in a strange cabin, and meets the person who brought her there.

The first thing she felt, and coincidentally also the second through tenth, was a sharp, stabbing pain in her head. It spiked as she cautiously opened her eyes, and peeked out at an entirely unfamiliar scene. A rustic cabin, carefully constructed, with handmade furniture. Looking down, she saw that what she’d took for blankets were actually furs sewn together. She blinked a few times, and then realized what a horrific mistake waking up had been. Her leg was on fire, but the center felt frozen and was sending throbbing pangs of cold up her body every couple of seconds. She tried to push the blanket up to actually see the injury, an action which proved to be another mistake. Her arms wouldn’t respond quite right, and when she pushed up her head to look further down she jerked her leg. The flames flared and she flopped back onto the lump of furs that served as a pillow, letting out an involuntary scream. The pain was too great, and she fell with relief into the sea of inky darkness that promised respite.

            The next time her eyes fluttered, it must have been later the same day. The light that had streamed through the windows earlier was replaced with shimmering silver shadows that seemed to dance to and fro, forming shapes. A cloak, curtains, a dress, a flag. And then, strangely, the moonlight began behaving differently. It came into the cabin, but through the door instead of the smaller portals, and moved around before sitting on the ground next to the bed. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, and she reached out to touch it, to prove to herself that something so perfect couldn’t really exist, that it would dissipate with a pop as soon as her hand made contact, that there was still a point in worshipping anything but the vision before her. The light drew back, as expected, and she closed her eyes to mourn what could never have been. She imagined she felt its gentle touch pulling the furs up, but she couldn’t bear to look and see nothing there.

            The sunlight was back with a vengeance, shining directly into her eyes and denying any hopes she had of staying asleep and ignoring the massive amount of notifications her leg was sending to her brain, each marked URGENT with the same message: ‘This is bad!’. Honestly, you’d think her brain would get the picture and put it on do not disturb. It had faded overnight, however, and now felt more constant and bearable than the spikes of agony of yesterday- or whenever she’d last woken up. For all she knew, it had been days. Her mouth was certainly dry enough. Doing her best to ignore her leg, she tried to take better stock of her surroundings. The cabin was rustic, but very well taken care of. A few things stood out to her- a pristine candle on the table, the closed door, and, joy beyond joys, a cup of water on the floor beside the bed. Ever so slowly, she maneuvered her arm down to it and brought it back up. It was warm and tasted vaguely of wood, but it was the best drink she had ever tasted. Her thirst quenched, something came to mind. How had she even gotten here? The change in location had just been accepted before, but now that she could think about it- what the hell? Last she knew, she’d been halfway up a steep shortcut to what had to be one of the most amazing views in the area. She had picked this region specifically for its amazing sunsets, and the day had been almost over, so she’d been hurrying… well, lesson learned. In any case, whoever lived here- probably some giant hermit, with her luck- must have found her there. She very likely owed them her life; there was no way she could have gotten out of there with a broken leg. Her musings were interrupted though, by a new sound that stood out in the stillness. Footsteps, outside. A sudden terror seized her at the thought and she scrambled to get back into a sleeping position without moving her lower half, snapping her eyes shut just as a creak echoed through the cabin. Every sense alight, she felt the person move closer until they were right by the bed. They leaned in, and she struggled to keep her breathing under control even as rogue thoughts tore through her head. Why was she afraid? They had already rescued her, so it wouldn’t make sense for them to hurt her now. She resolved that next time, she would meet them, but not now. It would be too hard to explain. She waited. And waited. They weren’t moving. Finally they stepped away, and after a few seconds she let out a silent sigh of relief, only to be met by a brief, swift, current of air directly in her ear. She yelped and her eyes shot open, only to be caught by a thoroughly captivating pair of green. She stared, breathless, for a long moment, before breaking contact and scanning the rest of the body they dwelled in. A thought came to mind, and she blurted it out without thinking.

            “Are you a yeti?” Silence. Not the comfortable silence of the morning, nor the companionable kind when both people know exactly how the other would respond. It was the silence of a predator that had just seen something entirely novel and was deliberating how to respond. She closed her eyes again, her cheeks now joining her leg in burning. Finally, the reply came, in an entirely too-amused tone.

            “No. I’m not a yeti, or a bigfoot, or an abominable snowman.” The question was implied with a cock of their head and she hurried to explain.

            “I didn’t mean that, I just meant, that, with the cabin and the furs and then you showed up and…” She cut herself off and took a deep breath. There was no need to panic. “I read once about how they were actually human shapeshifters, who would transform to scare off people so they could live in isolation. They were supposed to be immortal, and in the story they were all incredibly beautiful.” Another pause.

            “Well, apparently I’m not scary enough because you are, in fact, here. And you can look at me. I’m not a basilisk either.” She cautiously peered up, and was met with a smile. “There you go. I’m not sure how you got enough in that second to call me incredibly beautiful, but I’m not complaining.” Oh God. She really had, hadn’t she? The woman in front of her was undeniably attractive, but you’d think her hormones could have given her a break given the situation. She had on some kind of fur clothing, with her dark hair pulled back in an intricate braid. Distracted as she was, the sudden laugh came as a surprise. “If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to forget about your broken leg and do something stupid.” She swallowed nervously. She hadn’t been implying… had she? “Relax, blondie, I’m just kidding.” Oh. “I’m Lexa, by the way.” Lexa. She tried it out, letting the x slip off her tongue. Lexa coughed. Right.

            “Clarke.”

            “Clarke, hm? Well, I believe you’re going to be stuck here for the next few weeks, so I’m sure we’ll get to know each other _very_ well.” Alright, that had to be on purpose, and it was completely not fair. But, as the saying goes, everything is in love and war.

            “You better watch what you say. I might take you up on that ‘something stupid’ if you don’t watch out.” Lexa smiled with delight.

            “Oh, this will be fun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clarke's POV this time. I don't think I can wrap this up in one more chapter from here, but I didn't want to take too too long to update, so it'll go to 4 or possibly 5. I believe I've fixed the formatting this time. Let me know what you think, and thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit of a writing experiment, so be sure to drop a comment with feedback. Thanks for reading!


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